Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge

> The site was described by CNNMoney as offering a "deeply conspiratorial, anti-establishment and pessimistic view of the world." Financial journalists Felix Salmon and Justin Fox have characterized the site as conspiratorial. Fox described Ivandjiiski as "a wonderfully persistent investigative reporter" and credited him for successfully turning high-frequency trading "into a big political issue," but also termed most of the writing on the website as "half-baked hooey," albeit with some "truth to be gleaned from it." Tim Worstall described the site as a source of hysteria and occasionally misleading information.

> Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes Zero Hedge as a scaremongering outlet that promotes fears of hyperinflation and an "obviously ridiculous" form of "monetary permahawkery." Krugman notes that Bill McBride of Calculated Risk, an economics blog, has treated Zero Hedge with "appropriate contempt."

> Lokey, a former paid Zero Hedge writer who left the website in 2016 over disagreements in editorial direction, characterizes the site's political content as "disingenuous," summarizing its political stances as "Russia=good. Obama=idiot. Bashar al-Assad=benevolent leader. John Kerry=dunce. Vladimir Putin=greatest leader in the history of statecraft."

You'll excuse me wanting a slightly better source.

This is precisely highlighting the point from the parent comment. Is ZeroHedge an untrustworthy source? Heck yes it is! The problem is so is CNN, MSNBC, NYT, and Fox. Nearly every traditional American news source is now viewed as untrustworthy by a very large amount of people.

You can argue with me on it, but what matters is that MANY people now believe this, for example nearly all Trump supporters (and there's a lot of them).

In my opinion, this is the single biggest issue in our new political climate. There is a large, and growing base of people who no longer trust either politicians or the media reporting on them. Conspiracy theories flourish in environments like this, and when enough people believe conspiracy theories are true... sometimes they take actions.

I guess the 'problem' is the internet. Without the internet people would be blissfully ignorant of how the media works.

These things have been happening for a long time. Businesses, governments and other entities all have the ability to manipulate the media. I view it as a power struggle that sometimes bubbles up in public.

Oh, and social media is a part of it. Just it's slightly more difficult to control without people noticing.

Zero Hedge clearly has a pro-Russia bias just like CNN has a pro-US bias. Doesn't mean you should ignore everything CNN or zerohedge say. Every once in a while, cnn and zerohedge publish interesting stuff, just keep in mind their bias while reading them.

> like CNN has a pro-US bias

Only if you believe it is pro-US to abolish the right to bear arms, the right to free speech (hate speech laws) and to impose Socialism on US citizens.

>Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

You'll excuse me wanting a slightly better source.

Good thing there are five others in the section I quoted alone.

Did not want to repeat myself. :-)

Every source is biased. It is up to the reader to understand the biases, read from differently-biased sources and then make up his/her minds.

Zerohedge is just the inverse of the New York Times.

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